hd pongal festivals wallpapers, hd pongal festivals photos, hd pongal festivals images, hd pongal festivals imge, hd pongal festivals photo gallary, hd pongal festivals images, hd pongal festivals imges, hd pongal festivals gallary, hd pongal festivals stills, hd pongal festivals gallarys

download pongal 2011 wallpapers, download pongal 2011 image, download pongal 2011 img, download pongal 2011 pictures, download pongal 2011 pic, download pongal 2011 photo gallary, download pongal 2011 gallary, download pongal 2011 imges, download pongal 2011 img, download pongal 2011 stills

hd pongal 2011 wallpapers, hd pongal 2011 pictures, hd pongal 2011 photos, hd pongal 2011images, hd pongal 2011 imge, hd pongal 2011 photo gallary, hd pongal 2011 images gallary, hd pongal 2011 stills, hd pongal 2011 screesave, hd pongal 2011 stills

pongalfestival wallpapers, pongalfestival images, pongalfestival pictures, pongalfestival photos, pongalfestival imges, pongalfestival photo gallary, pongalfestival images gallary, pongalfestival stills, pongalfestivalgallary, pongalfestival img, pongalfestival pic, pongalfestival hd pictures

Olsen Creek

I took this picture of the frosty field across from the parking lot where we started our hike this morning. It was in the low to mid-20s all day, never warming up very much unless we were in the sunshine. Although there wasn't a cloud in the sky, most of the day we hiked on shady wooded trails. Thirteen of us showed up for the last hike of the year. We were dressed for the cold, so nobody suffered too much, until we had to cross Olsen Creek. The rocks had a coating of sheer ice on them, and a few people got wet feet, but most of us made it across with only a little difficulty.

If you look closely at the rocks, you can see how treacherous the crossing was. And there is fresh snow on the foliage. The water in my Camelbak bladder kept freezing up and I had to suck really hard to get the ice to flow through. After crossing this creek, we had a very steep hillside to climb, more than 500 feet almost straight up, it seemed. We reached a trail we had never hiked before and decided to follow it, since it was rumored to end up at a familiar trail. However, as we began to descend, we realized that we were not going to have much of a view and finally opted to have lunch when we found a moderately sunny spot.

You can see the steam rising from Frank's hot drink and the icy ferns surrounding our lunch spot. I also had a nice cup of hot tea and found it still piping hot even after three hours in my backpack. There's a good reason to preheat a thermos; noting tastes quite as good as a hot drink in the middle of a frozen landscape. We didn't stay long, as we began to feel the cold seeping through our clothes, even with little wind.

We laughed at this moss-covered signpost. I think (but I am not sure) that there is an actual sign under there, but who knows for sure? At least it was interesting to look at, and if you enlarge it you can see a few flakes of snow on it. We knew we were in the general vicinity of a logging road as we began to see a familiar clearcut showing through the trees. When we got to the road, it was the only view we had all day.

These are the Canadian Cascades you are looking at, showing as well as our beautiful cloudless sky. By the time we reached our cars, we had covered eight miles and more than 2,000 feet up and down. We were all very happy to have had such a wonderful hike with good friends as our last outing of 2010.

Tomorrow and Saturday are also projected to be clear and cold, so I think I will head down to Lake Padden on New Year's Day to watch the Polar Bear Club this year. Last New Year's the temperature was in the 50s when they dashed into the water, but this year it will be in the teens! Should make for some excitement!
:-)

Tree Skirt

This is one of our [after] Christmas Traditions. . . I put the kids' handprints on our Tree Skirt.


We use this type of paint(CAUTION-this doesn't come out of clothes).


Paint their hands {our kids LOVE this part}.


Place their hands on fabric.


Make sure you label their names & the year.

Black Swan

My friend Judy and I went to see The Black Swan the other night. I'm STILL not sure what I think of the movie, even after thinking about it for a day. The link takes you to the Rotten Tomatoes website, where the critics give it an 87% freshness rating, and the audience gives it 90%. Scenes from the movie keep coming back to me, especially when Natalie Portman is playing the Black Swan. Nina (Portman's character) is cast in a ballet production where she is expected to play the virginal and pristine White Swan and then morph into the sensual and sexy Black Swan.

The movie was really confusing, since you are seeing almost all the scenes from the point of view of Nina, who is going quietly mad in her quest to perform both parts perfectly. Several scenes that you think are real end up being hallucinations, and the director, Darren Aronofsky, doesn't help you separate the real from the imagined. In fact, by the end of the movie, I am not at all sure what actually happened, other than that she gave a performance that riveted the audience. I found this excerpt from a review by Chuck Koplinski (he reviews three movies; the second one is Black Swan):

I’m not sure all of the narrative pieces fit together, but that’s Aronofsky’s point. An examination of one’s descent into madness is only effective if we are put into the shoes of the afflicted, and the film does just that. Thanks to the filmmaker’s audacity and a fearless performance from Portman, Black Swan proves to be a gripping, shocking and haunting look at the fragility of the human mind and how defenseless we all can become to our fears and insecurities.

It's not a movie for the faint of heart, but I am glad I saw it. I cannot put Portman's Black Swan out of my mind and keep seeing her face, thinking that if anybody ever deserved an Oscar for a performance, it's Natalie Portman for this one. It was breathtaking.

pongal 2011 wallpapers, pongal 2011 pictures, pongal 2011 images, pongal 2011 imge, pongal 2011 picture, pongal 2011 photo gallary, pongal 2011 image gallary,download pongal 2011 images, pictures pongal 2011, images pongal 2011, gallary pongal 2011, stills pongal 2011

My Christmas present

While I was in Colorado, I discovered that one of my hosts, Josh, is a parachute rigger who just happened to have a Spectre 150 in his loft that he wanted to sell. I had been telling him about my fruitless quest to find one. This is EXACTLY the canopy I decided I wanted to fly, because it's much more docile and sedate than my Stiletto 135. While this is arcane information to anyone who doesn't skydive, for me it's the perfect canopy for a little old lady to fly (like me). So I bought it from him and brought it home. I wore most of my heavy clothes on the plane and stuffed the canopy into my carry-on, which was pretty darn puffy but still fit, although I had to sit on it to get it closed.

The Christmas present part is that I asked Smart Guy if he would hook it up to my container as a Christmas present to me. I had little expectation that it would happen quickly, because after all, it's wet and wintery here in the Pacific Northwest, and hardly anybody is jumping, certainly not me at the moment. However, he decided to get the work done now, which is pretty time consuming. He's busy checking the lines to make sure they are correctly positioned before moving on to the next steps. If you were to enlarge the above picture, on the bottom of the TV stand is a picture of us on our anniversary after we had made our tenth wedding anniversary jump. We were married in freefall exactly ten years before, which I wrote about here.

 Most skydivers spend their careers learning to fly smaller and smaller parachutes, because the smaller they are, the more high performance they are. If you are still jumping into your sixties, however, it makes perfect sense to move to something that is gentle and forgiving. My Stiletto would sometimes open hard and so I had to be careful with how I pack it; in the days when I jumped a Spectre, I remembered that it NEVER opens hard. In fact, Josh said this one opens "like butter." Who could ask for anything better?

Each canopy has a personality, so even the ones that are the same brand and size are different from each other, and although I really enjoyed the flight performance of my Stiletto, I didn't like the fact that it rarely opened predictably. This one will, and the extra fifteen square feet (the difference between 135 square feet and 150 square feet) will give me even more cushion for landing. I can't wait!
:-)

{Sweet Poem}

I love this sweet Poem.

Snowflakes softly falling

upon your window play,

Your blankets snug around you

into sleep you drift away.

I bend to gently kiss you

when I see that on the floor,

There's a letter neatly written

I wonder who its for.

I quietly unfold it

making sure you're still alseep.

It's a Christmas list for Santa-

one my heart will always keep.

It started just as always

with the toys seen on TV,

A new watch for your father

and a winter coat for me.

But as my eyes read on

I could see that deep inside,

There were many things you wished for

that your loving heart would hide.
You asked if your friend Molly

could have another dad;

It seems her father hits her

and it makes you very sad.

Then you asked dear Santa

if the neighbors down the street

Could find a job, that he might have

some food, and clothes and heat.

You saw a family on the news

whose house had blown away;

"Dear Santa, send them just one thing:

a place where they can stay."

"And Santa, those four cookies

that I left you for a treat,

could you take them to the children

who have nothing else to eat?"

"Do you know that little bear I have-

the one I love so dear?

I'm leaving it for you to take

to Africa this year."

"And as you fly your reindeer

on this night of Jesus' birth,

could your magic bring to everyone

goodwill and peace on earth?"

"There's one last thing before you go

so grateful I would be-

If you'd smile at Baby Jesus

in the manger by our tree."

I pulled the letter close to me;

I felt it melt my heart

Those tiny hands had written

what no other could impart.

And a little child shall lead them

was whispered in my ear.

As I watched you sleep on Christmas Eve

while Santa Claus was here.

MERRY CHRISTMAS to you all!

Remembering Emily

Yesterday I attended the celebration of Emily Berkeley's life, which was the reason for my trip back to Colorado. It was held in a huge airport hangar at Mile-Hi Skydiving, where I spent so many of my skydiving years and all of my instructional ones. As we walked toward the hangar, we saw the fence decorated in Emily's colors, yellow and blue.

When we walked inside, we saw the setup at the front of the hanger with an enormous screen showing literally hundreds of rotating pictures of Emily through the years. A podium with flowers, a microphone, thoughtful kleenex, were the focus point where many of Emily's family members spoke with such love and emotion about their beloved sister, niece, and cousin. I never knew that she had such a huge extended family, and Lee (she called him Kiwi) had his mother and other family relatives who flew in from New Zealand. They took up the first four rows of chairs, out of more than 300 that had been set up in the hangar.

After listening to the wonderful, funny and heartfelt family memories, we watched an Honor Guard from the Air Force Academy (Emily was the instructor for many cadets) fold and present the triangle flag to Kiwi. Then the back of the hangar opened up and we followed the family out to an area behind to watch a flyover of three planes, all of which she had made numerous jumps from. The picture isn't perfect but it shows the planes, lights ablaze, and every one of us skydivers cried as we watched them fly overhead and then peel off in a beautiful flower.

When we went back into the hangar, there was a table set up with all the red wine we had been asked to bring to share, and trays of hot food in three different locations around the inside of the hangar. The mic was opened to any and all who wanted to share memories of Emily. Sarah, my wonderful host, read her tribute and one that Kiwi had written from the point of view of Emily's wonderful dog, Dottie. More than five hundred, maybe closer to six hundred people had come to the celebration. This picture might give you a bit of an idea of the size of the crowd. (Remember you can enlarge any picture.)

As people ate and drank and things began to become a little less emotional, people hugged and gathered in groups to laugh, cry, and share together. I saw so many people I once instructed in skydiving, and people who have become an integral part of the skydiving scene since I left. My earrings were hugged off. When we got back home I realized they are now somewhere in that big hangar, two heart-shaped earrings that I hope will be picked up by someone as a reminder of the huge heart that Emily had. Four people will live long lives because of the donation of Emily's organs, two of them heart valves. So it is fitting that those two earrings stayed behind in the place where we celebrated her amazing life.

I will treasure this picture forever: it's me with Emily's beautiful mom, with Emily and Kiwi looking over our shoulder from the big screen behind us. Goodbye, my dear friend, I will never forget you and will one day think of you without pain and only remember the beautiful person you will always be in my heart.

Christmas Morning. . .

Every year on Christmas morning, before our kids can go downstairs, they have to wait until mom and dad gets up. So this year this is what they get to keep themselves occupied.

When I have taken all the pictures, they can come down and see all the Christmas gifts. Before any paper tearing is done, we eat breakfast( a tradition in our family since I was little) so our bellies are full of something good. (then I don't mind if they decide to eat all the candy that's in their stocking). This year I'm going to try these yummy looking cinnamon rolls.

Hope you have a good easy recipe to start your Christmas morning off.

{Reindeer} Pillow

A couple years ago, I made these Pillows for the girls to put on their beds during the month of December. We used their foot & hand prints to make a Reindeer face.